Smart table, dumb waiter
Hobnobbing with friends? No need to get caught up in the kitchen when you can have food to go
鈥淭here are two things our local residents鈥� meetings take seriously: access to driveways and access to refreshments,鈥� says Sybil Dudee. 鈥淏ut we can鈥檛 all reach the coffee table and I can鈥檛 vote on cycle paths when I鈥檓 busy peddling cheese to my peers. I need the hostessing equivalent of a dropped kerb.鈥�
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We don鈥檛 give much thought to coffee tables, they鈥檙e just, well, part of the furniture. Yet they sit in the uncanny valley of serving space: not big enough to sit at like a dinner table, not small enough to put on your lap like a dinner tray. Perhaps there鈥檚 a third way to ensure everyone gets a snack: bring the table to them.
I started with the ubiquitous Ikea Lack 鈥� the Times New Roman of coffee tables. It is ideal: lightweight and designed (and priced) for DIY.
I gutted a children鈥檚 ride-on electric car, and fixed the axles to the table legs. I left the comically large wheels attached for their aesthetic charm.
The hefty motor can ferry snacks up to the weight of an average 3-year-old 鈥� that should be more than enough biscuits for everyone.
To give the table brains enough to navigate the room, I spliced a programmable Arduino into the circuitry. I then added optical sensors that let the robo-table see sharp transitions between different colours and so follow a line.
Black tape on the light tiles in my bathroom worked well. But that鈥檚 not normally where I serve refreshments. The edge of a rug placed in my living room proved less than eye-catching for my robo-table. Whenever it lost sight of the line, it wiggled back and forth hunting for it, scattering snacks as though planting a field of M&M鈥檚.
To save snacks, I switched to a preprogrammed route to get my table to bus food around the room, although like many bus routes, the schedule could be a little erratic. By the third circuit of the room, robo-table had drifted perilously close to a pot-plant collision. No matter 鈥� the battery will probably die before that happens.
Some were less impressed. I had just got started on a 鈥渞eturn to kitchen鈥� refuelling button, when my housemate remarked it would be less effort to just put a bowl of crisps on the Roomba.
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